Eradicating Racism: An Endocrine Society Policy Perspective

The Endocrine Society recognizes racism as a root cause of the health disparities that affect racial/ethnic minority communities in the United States and throughout the world. In this policy perspective, we review the sources and impact of racism on endocrine health disparities and propose interventions aimed at promoting an equitable, diverse, and just healthcare system. Racism in the healthcare system perpetuates health disparities through unequal access and quality of health services, inadequate representation of health professionals from racial/ethnic minority groups, and the propagation of the erroneous belief that socially constructed racial/ethnic groups constitute genetically and biologically distinct populations. Unequal care, particularly for common endocrine diseases such as diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, and thyroid disease, results in high morbidity and mortality for individuals from racial/ethnic minority groups, leading to a high socioeconomic burden on minority communities and all members of our society. As health professionals, researchers, educators, and leaders, we have a responsibility to take action to eradicate racism from the healthcare system. Achieving this goal would result in high-quality health care services that are accessible to all, diverse workforces that are representative of the communities we serve, inclusive and equitable workplaces and educational settings that foster collaborative teamwork, and research systems that ensure that scientific advancements benefit all members of our society. The Endocrine Society will continue to prioritize and invest resources in a multifaceted approach to eradicate racism, focused on educating and engaging current and future health professionals, teachers, researchers, policy makers, and leaders.

Service Delivery, State Legitimacy and Conflict in Arab Countries: Exploring the Key Linkages Using a Social Policy Perspective

This paper addresses the question of how service delivery (SD) affects state legitimacy (SL) and conflict (C) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, drawing particularly on frameworks that move beyond a state-centric approach. Focusing on the majority-Arab countries of MENA, the paper aims to: (1) offer a preliminary explanation of the distinctiveness of this region in light of some of the main findings of the introductory paper by the lead guest editor Timo Kivimäki and (2) explore the potential of a social policy perspective in explaining the relationship between SD, SL and C. This is achieved by combining research insights acquired through extensive qualitative social policy research in the MENA region with a re-reading of the existing literature on SD, SL and C. To support a comprehensive re-examination of the issues at hand, the paper also draws on the 5th Wave of the Arab Barometer micro-level survey (ABS) on Arab citizen perceptions of socio-economic conditions in their countries and macro-level social welfare expenditure data from the World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI). By bringing insights from the social policy literature on the MENA region into conversation with broader research on the relationship between SD, SL and C, we identify several distinctive features of service delivery in the MENA context and examine their implications for state legitimacy and conflict.

Community Behavior in Health Protocol Policy Perspective Post Covid-19 Vaccination

The spread of COVID-19 has an impact on various aspects of life, not only material losses but has claimed many millions of lives. Each country has made various policies in tackling and further outbreaks of the virus. The government has issued policies related to health protocols to solutions by vaccinating the entire community, but after vaccination many people ignore health protocols. This study is a descriptive study with the aim of describing people's tasikmalaya city behavior after vaccination and viewed from a policy perspective on health protocols. Based on research, it shows that people who have vaccinated both stages one and two, pay less attention to health protocols, especially in using masks, as well as the increasing number of people's activities that ignore health protocols, coupled with weak supervision from each Regional Government with the Covid-19 task force so that the community is more lax to carry out various activities without paying attention to the applicable provisions

Michel Foucault, Social Policy and 'Limit-Experience'

<p>This thesis considers whether the discipline of social policy can validly use the patterns and intentions implicit in Foucault's critique of modernity to develop a new qualitative approach to social theory. He examined the conditions under which various regimes of social and political practice came into being; how they are maintained and the particular manner of their transformation. There are two specific emphases that establish the pattern of my overall inquiry. The first involves a reflection on the troubled and ineffectual place of normative social theory within contemporary social policy discourse. The second is a reconsideration of Foucault's oeuvre in relation to new social theory building within social policy. Both of these concerns offer an opportunity to reflect on the place of social theory within a discursive world that 'appears' cosmopolitan and diverse. Foucault famously declared that the point of philosophical activity involved the endeavour to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently - to examine the functioning of our ideas as 'limit-experiences'. He coined this phrase 'limit-experience' to outline his critique of the 'forms of rationalizations' that comprise the present practice of politics within modernity. He thought the decisive question was how apparently 'universal, necessary, and obligatory discourses about political and social knowledge shapes that which ought more properly to be regarded as 'singular, contingent, and the product of arbitrary constraints'. The former injunctive and 'magisterial' arguments that supported initial patterns of welfare state rhetoric are no longer persuasive. There has been a 'sea-change' in contemporary social ideas - from a welfare state to a welfare society - one that is breath-taking in its hegemonic compass. That world is increasingly depicted as a postmodern social world where there is little apparent respect for, let alone reliance on, the grand metaphors and social themes of classic social policy. This reconsideration of Foucault's ideas from a social policy perspective will not necessarily yield a new compelling normative rhetoric but it will provide an opportunity to think differently about the taken-for-granted nature of so much social policy theorizing. His portrayal of how we might 'think differently' about the multitude of practices involved in the rationalizations and subjectifications of 'limit-experiences' provides an opportunity to reflect on the patterning and practices that construct the current discourses of welfare and social policy. We do need to think differently or at least to see if it is possible to do so. Imagining difference, strategizing for it, and welcoming it, mark us out as constantly restless - a personal style that Foucault embraced with some gusto!</p>